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President Barack Obama phoned the plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 Supreme Court case in the middle of their live interview on MSNBC to congratulate them on the court’s ruling, which cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California.

“We’re proud of you guys and we’re so glad that in California and for a growing number of states around the country, because of your leadership, things are moving very quickly,” Obama said on speakerphone. “You guys should be very proud of today.”

The phone call was Obama’s first reaction to the high court’s gay marriage rulings, which also saw a key part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act struck down.

“This was discrimination enshrined in law,” Obama said in a statement afterward on the Defense of Marriage Act ruling. “It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal – and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”